CBR: Comic Book Legends Revealed #297

COMIC LEGEND: The phrase “grim and gritty” first appeared in connection with Batman…on the 1960s Batman TV series!!
STATUS: True

The term “grim and gritty” is sort of a catch-all phrase used to describe the trend since the mid-1980s to make superhero comics, well, grim and gritty.

BATMAN #440 (Aug 1989)

Typically, Alan Moore’s Watchmen and Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns are credited with inspiring this trend… but really, you could go much further back than that if you’d like. I suppose, though, Moore and Miller’s works were SO popular that people tended to follow their leads more so than other similar works.

Heck, Batman was so “grim and gritty” at one point that it even became a plot point where a young boy, Tim Drake, feels Batman has gotten TOO grim and gritty, and needed a Robin to balance him out…